A glut of mushrooms

A glut of mushrooms  - 3 good recipes

The thing with reduced items is that you can never tell what you've going to get. You have to make the best of what you have*.

On this occasion, there must have been some sort of fungal explosion over in Leinster,  as two supermarkets I went to had lots of cheap mushrooms.

So the three things to do with these mushrooms today are:

A) Chop and fry in butter, fresh herbs, brandy and cream, and spread on toast.  That was basically the first thing I did.  

B) Pickle them to preserve punnet number 2, as suggested by Hayley  I highly recommend you read her blog if you like utterly amazing food made from scratch, and the odd fascinating article about marine science too.

C) Today's recipe: 

Chicken and mushroom soup

Ingredients:

 - Half a punnet of chestnut mushrooms

 - Half a punnet of button or closed cup mushrooms

 - Stock.  I'm using some of the miso I used for the ramen last week, plus see below...

 - Butter

 - Olive oil

 - Stale bread, to bulk the soup out.  Say about 1+1/2 slices.

 - Cream / creme fraiche / yoghurt , or even some milk

 - Herbs: parsley, thyme, or your own favourite mixed brand.  Fresh are always best but again, even a good pinch of the dried ones work.

 - The "Trifecta"  - 1/2 carrot, 1/4 onion, 1/4 leek.  For the stock.  See below...

Chicken Stock for soup

OK, looks a bit nasty, but it was €0.60 and full of chickeny goodness.

Today I have another secret budget ingredient, courtesy of the “victualler” in Dun Laoghaire.  Chicken carcass, complete with lots of meat on there, should add a good bit of flavour to the soup, Obviously you can omit this if you want a veggie or vegan option, try miso or a budget veg stock cube.

Method

For the stock

• First up chop your carrots, onions and leek roughly, and bring to the boil with the chicken.  
• Let that simmer for a couple of hours, then give the whole thing a squish with a potato masher or similar to get all the flavour out, and strain through a sieve, colander, or muslin cloth, depending on what you have and how clear you like your stock.  
• I'm going with the colander for this batch - tends to let more meat through but still none of the bones.  

For the soup 

- Wipe the mushrooms with a damp cloth or similar, first up.  Also, if you're going to store mushrooms, put them in a paper bag, not a plastic container.  They won't spoil that way. 

 - Chop the mushrooms and herbs.  Fry the mushrooms slowly in the oil and butter, until soft.

 - At this point I'm adding a little splash of brandy, as I will be using it in next week's recipe, which I am rather proud of.  

 - Add the stock and simmer.  

 - Shred in the stale bread and chopped herbs.  

 - Lastly add the cream/milk/creme fraiche.

A new addition to the SupermarketValueFood blog kitchen is this nifty hand blender, which, while not as good as a full food processor, is compact enough to fit in the cupboard, and versatile enough to justify a €10 outlay.

A €10 hand blender, yesterday.  Useful for more than soup as well.

So, the whole soup gets nicely pulverised, but not too pulverised as I like some texture.  And there you go.  

It goes well with a bit of that stale bread toasted into croutons or brushed with oil and heated up, or put in the toaster.

Less value but more flavour

•  If you're feeling really flush you can add a drop of red wine or brandy into the soup.  Today I shelled out for some brandy as I am planning something a little special for the next post...Just remember to cook the alcohol off, nothing tastes worse than boozy food.  Believe me I've tried...  
• Best thing to do is to add a splash to the pan just before you add the stock, as the pan will be a lot hotter and you'll hit the magic 86°C where the flavour stays but the alcohol aways...

Links and ideas

Other fun things to do with mushrooms are

1.  Mushroom and bacon ravioli – Inspired by my aunt I might have a go at rolling my own pasta again... Here's a recipe I found online which looks pretty good - it uses ricotta cheese but I'm fairly sure you could use most any soft kind, and add bacon to it.  Everything is better with bacon*
2. Spaghetti carbonara also works well with mushrooms.
3. I'm deadly sure Hayley will have done something amazing with mushrooms at some point as well.